“I am very aware of all the elements in opera,” the playwright Albert Innaurato, who died this week, once wrote in The New York Times, “but I love voices.”

The Metropolitan Opera is listening to him.

The past year has brought a subtle yet significant shift in the Met’s strategy. Taking as its motto “The Voice Must Be Heard,” the company is tacitly admitting that concentrating its marketing energies on its productions — the focus under Peter Gelb, its general manager since 2006 — hasn’t solved its persistent problem of getting people in the seats.

Singers, not directors, sell tickets, the Met is rediscovering, and in the absence of bankable stars its model is doomed. This is especially true since the company’s repertory is so stagnant: All five of the operas featured in its first month of performances, which began on Monday with Bellini’s “Norma” and continued with Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” on Tuesday and Wednesday, have been heard here in the last five years.

The last five years have also brought 19 of the 24 operas on offer this season, even accounting for Thomas Adès’s “The Exterminating Angel,” which has its American premiere on Oct. 26. Indeed, this is repertory-wise one of the dullest Met seasons in memory.

The only thing (if anything) distinguishing one “Turandot” revival from the following year’s is the singers. So while I kept my eyes open this week during “Norma,” “Hoffmann” and “Flute,” I tried extra hard to focus solely on what the Met has been demanding of me in subway posters all over the city: Hear the voice.

The results were impressive; the company seems to be taking to heart its own marketing copy. This was proved above all by the opening-night “Norma,” whose urgency emerged far more from the exciting singing than the dimly lit production. (The voice must be heard, and nothing must be seen?)

Sondra Radvanovsky returned to the title role, which she played here four years ago; her pungent, chicory-flecked voice was more settled now, less blazing and more calmly confident. And while she is still not a detailed actress — Norma’s final act of self-sacrifice seemed just as unmotivated as the last time she did it — the vocal fireworks and sudden high, soft notes came across less as showy effects this time around.

As for her co-stars, there’s always something affecting in Joseph Calleja’s plangent, slightly nasal tenor, always a sense of tears being held back. Joyce DiDonato may push sharp and grow edgy as her voice gets to its highest reaches, but lower down the sound is cashmere.

As Offenbach’s Hoffmann, Vittorio Grigolo simply flings his tenor out. Sometimes he can push too hard: In his telling of the legend of Kleinzach the dwarf, when it seemed as if he was trying to sneer, he merely shouted. But when he lets up on the pressure, the sound is sweet and bright, and he gives, and gives, and gives — there are few Met artists these days who offer more bang for your buck.

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Sondra Radvanovsky, left, and Joyce DiDonato in “Norma.”CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

Erin Morley poised herself between silky sensuality and the stratosphere as Olympia, the robot he falls for. (Between her and Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night in “The Magic Flute,” it was a golden week for notes way, way above the musical staff.) Anita Hartig sang with controlled, concentrated richness as Antonia, one of Hoffmann’s other loves; Laurent Naouri sounded wry and roomy as the four villains who plague him. Tara Erraught, making her Met debut as Nicklausse and Hoffmann’s muse, seemed most comfortable as her lines rose; billed as a mezzo-soprano, her tone paled down in traditional mezzo territory.

Another debut artist, the soprano Golda Schultz, was the true star of “Flute” as Pamina, her voice buoyant yet substantial, creamy but never heavy. Greeting Tamino (the robust Charles Castronovo) before they embarked on their trials, she floated a line as plainly beautiful as anything I heard in these three evenings.

The conducting all week was superb, beginning with Carlo Rizzi’s vibrant yet unpressured “Norma.” Johannes Debus, in “Hoffmann,” kept textures light and agile, but didn’t stint on grandeur, and while James Levine’s pacing of the “Flute” overture was breakneck, the rest was forward-moving but sensitive.

I understand why the Met’s attention is ever more squarely on its singers. But if it wants to thrive, rather than merely survive, it must also look to the future of the art form: the relevance of its theatricality, the rejuvenation of its repertory, the cultivation of new work.

It is strange that in a season that brings such an anticipated Adès premiere, the company’s promotional materials crow that “no other art form so unabashedly celebrates the power of the human voice. But opera is also a vehicle for creative expression for conductors, orchestra musicians, directors, designers and choreographers.”

Composers are left off the list, depressingly. The voice must be heard, sure, but what are they singing?

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C12 of the New York edition with the headline: The Met Has Voices, but Will It Need More?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe